Reddit is testing verified profile badges

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Reddit has quietly started testing a new badge of honor, or at least a badge of “Hey, this person is who they say they are.” 

A small group of notable figures and businesses are getting grey checkmarks, Reddit’s new version of verified profiles. 

In a blog post, Reddit explained that the goal is simple: help users figure out whether the person answering questions in an AMA is actually a NASA engineer or just someone whose entire résumé is “once watched The Martian twice.” 

Whether it’s a journalist reporting breaking news, a celebrity dropping into a fan subreddit, or a brand trying to look human, Reddit wants people to know when the source is legit.

The twist, of course, is that Reddit is built on the sacred tradition of pseudonymity, where “CheeseburgerWizard93” might be a Nobel Prize winner, and no one questions it. 

So the company insists the checkmark is totally optional and not meant to create a new class of Reddit royalty. It’s just a helpful tool for mods and users trying to sift truth from cosplay.

And no, a missing checkmark doesn’t mean someone is an impostor. 

Some beloved Redditors may never get one, Tony Hawk, for example, who casually pops into skateboarding threads to chat with fans and occasionally remind everyone that, yes, the guy doing heel flips at 57 is actually Tony Hawk.

Second heelflip in 3 years [57YO]
byu/tonyskates inOldSkaters

In this early alpha phase, checkmarks go only to active, well-behaved contributors and vaguely defined “trusted partners.” 

NSFW accounts are automatically disqualified (no grey checks in the spicy corners of Reddit).

For now, Reddit is manually verifying people, but promises a third-party system later. And the timing is interesting. 

Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is rebooting Digg, pitching it as a bot-resistant haven using fancy cryptography. 

Meanwhile, Sam Altman is preparing to launch World, another attempt at proving that humans online are, in fact, human.

So Reddit’s new grey check? It’s less about status and more about survival in an internet increasingly overrun by bots, AI, and people pretending to be Tony Hawk.